Charlie Codman's Cruise

PREFACE

In deference to the expressed wishes of some of his young friends, the author has essayed a story of the sea, and now presents "Charlie Codman's Cruise," as the third volume of the Campaign Series. It will be found more adventurous than its predecessors, and the trials which Charlie is called upon to encounter are of a severer character than befell Frank Frost or Paul Prescott. But it will be found that they were met with the same manly spirit, and a like determination to be faithful to duty at all hazards.

Though not wholly a stranger to the sea, the author is quite aware of the blunders to which a landsman is exposed in treating of matters and a mode of life which, at the best, he must comprehend but imperfectly, and has endeavored to avoid, as far as possible, professional technicalities, as not essential to the interest of the story.

With these few words he submits the present volume to his young readers, hoping for it a welcome even more generous than has been accorded to "Frank's Campaign" and "Paul Prescott's Charge."

I.

CHARLIE AND THE MISER

Charlie Codman turned out of Washington into Bedford Street just as the clock in the Old South steeple struck two. He was about fourteen, a handsome, well-made boy, with a bright eye and a manly expression. But he was poor. That was evident enough from his clothes, which, though neat and free from dust, were patched in several places. He had a small roll of daily papers under his arm, the remains of his stock in trade, which he had been unable wholly to dispose of.

Some of my readers may know that the Latin School and English High School are kept in the same building. At two o'clock both are dismissed. Charlie had scarcely passed the school-house when a crowd of boys issued from the school-yard, and he heard his name called from behind. Looking back he recognized a boy somewhat smaller than himself, with whom he had formed an acquaintance some time before.

"Where are you bound, Charlie?" asked Edwin Banks.

"I'm going home now."

"What luck have you had this morning?"

"Not much. I've got four papers left over, and that will take away about all my profits."

"What a pity you are poor, Charlie. I wish you could come to school with us."

"So do I, Eddie. I'd give a good deal to get an education, but I feel that I ought to help mother."

"Why won't you come some time, and see us, Charlie? Clare and myself would be very glad to see you at any time."

"I should like to go," said Charlie, "but I don't look fit."

"Oh, never mind about your clothes. I like you just as well as if you were dressed in style."

"Perhaps I'll come some time," said Charlie. "I'd invite you to come and see me, but we live in a poor place."

"Just as if I should care for that. I will come whenever I get an invitation."

"Then come next Saturday afternoon. I will be waiting for you as you come out of school."

Charlie little thought where he would be when Saturday came.

Shortly after the boys separated, and Charlie's attention was arrested by the sight of an old man with a shambling gait, who was bending over and anxiously searching for something on the sidewalk. Charlie recognized him at once as "old Manson, the miser," for this was the name by which he generally went.

Old Peter Manson was not more than fifty-five, but he looked from fifteen to twenty years older. If his body had been properly cared for, it would have been different; but, one by one, its functions had been blunted and destroyed, and it had become old and out of repair. Peter's face was ploughed with wrinkles. His cheeks were thin, and the skin was yellow and hung in folds. His beard appeared to have received little or no attention for a week, at least, and was now stiff and bristling.

The miser's dress was not very well fitted to his form. It was in the fashion of twenty years before. Grayish pantaloons, patched in divers places with dark cloth by an unskilful hand; a vest from which the buttons had long since departed, and which was looped together by pieces of string, but not closely enough to conceal a dirty and tattered shirt beneath; a coat in the last stages of shabbiness; while over all hung a faded blue cloak, which Peter wore in all weathers. In the sultriest days of August he might have been seen trudging along in this old mantle, which did him the good service of hiding a multitude of holes and patches, while in January he went no warmer clad. There were some who wondered how he could stand the bitter cold of winter with no more adequate covering; but if Peter's body was as tough as his conscience, there was no fear of his suffering.

Charlie paused a moment to see what it was that the old man was hunting for.

"Have you lost anything?" he asked.

"Yes," said Peter, in quavering accents. "See if you can't find it, that's a good boy. Your eyes are better than mine."

"What is it?"

"It is some money, and I—I'm so poor, I can't afford to lose it."

"How much was it?"

"It wasn't much, but I'm so poor I need it."

Charlie espied a cent, lying partially concealed by mud, just beside the curb-stone. He picked it up.

"This isn't what you lost, is it?"

"Yes," said Peter, seizing it eagerly. "You're a good boy to find it. A good boy!"

"Well," thought Charlie, wondering, as the old man hobbled off with his recovered treasure, "I'd rather be poor than care so much for money as that. People say old Peter's worth his thousands. I wonder whether it is so."

Charlie little dreamed how much old Peter was likely to influence his destiny, and how, at his instigation, before a week had passed over his head, he would find himself in a very disagreeable situation.

We must follow Peter.

With his eyes fixed on the ground he shuffled along, making more rapid progress than could have been expected. Occasionally he would stoop down and pick up any little stray object which arrested his attention, even to a crooked pin, which he thrust into his cloak, muttering as he did so, "Save my buying any. I haven't had to buy any pins for more'n ten years, and I don't mean to buy any more while I live. Ha! ha! Folks are so extravagant! They buy things they don't need, or that they might pick up, if they'd only take the trouble to keep their eyes open. 'Tisn't so with old Peter. He's too cunning for that. There goes a young fellow dressed up in the fashion. What he's got on must have cost nigh on to a hundred dollars. What dreadful extravagance! Ha! ha! It hasn't cost old Peter twenty dollars for the last ten years. If he had spent money as some do, he might have been in the poor-house by this time. Ugh! ugh! it costs a dreadful sum to live. If we could only come into the world with natural clothes, like cats, what a deal better it would be. But it costs the most for food. Oh dear! what a dreadful appetite I've got, and I must eat. All the money spent for victuals seem thrown away. I've a good mind, sometimes, to go to the poor-house, where it wouldn't cost me anything. What a blessing it would be to eat, if you could only get food for nothing!"

It is very clear that Peter would have been far better off, as far as the comforts of life are concerned, in the city almshouse; but there were some little obstacles in the way of his entering. For instance, it would scarcely have been allowed a public pensioner to go round quarterly to collect his rents,—a thing which Peter would hardly have relinquished.

Reflections upon the cost of living brought to Peter's recollection that he had nothing at home for supper. He accordingly stepped into a baker's shop close at hand.

"Have you got any bread cheap?" he inquired of the baker.

"We intend to sell at moderate prices."

"What do you ask for those loaves?" said the old man, looking wistfully at some fresh loaves piled upon the counter, which had been but a short time out of the oven.

"Five cents apiece," said the baker. "I'll warrant you will find them good. They are made of the best of flour."

"Isn't five cents rather dear?" queried Peter, his natural appetite struggling with his avarice.

"Dear!" retorted the baker, opening his eyes in astonishment; "why, my good sir, at what price do you expect to buy bread?"

"I've no doubt they're very good," said Peter, hastily; "but have you any stale loaves? I guess they'll be better for me."

"Yes," said the baker, "I believe I have, but they're not as good as the fresh bread."

"How do you sell your stale loaves?" inquired Peter, fumbling in his pocket for some change.

"I sell them for about half price—three cents apiece."

"You may give me one, then; I guess it'll be better for me."

Even Peter was a little ashamed to acknowledge that it was the price alone which influenced his choice.

The baker observed that, notwithstanding his decision, he continued to look wistfully towards the fresh bread. Never having seen old Peter before, he was unacquainted with his character, and judging from his dilapidated appearance that he might be prevented, by actual poverty, from buying the fresh bread, exclaimed with a sudden impulse: "You seem to be poor. If you only want one loaf, I will for this once give you a fresh loaf for three cents—the same price I ask for the stale bread."

"Will you?"

Old Peter's eyes sparkled with eagerness as he said this.

"Poor man!" thought the baker with mistaken compassion; "he must indeed be needy, to be so pleased."

"Yes," he continued, "you shall have a loaf this once for three cents. Shall I put it in a paper for you?"

Peter nodded.

Meanwhile he was busy fumbling in his pockets for the coins requisite to purchase the loaf. He drew out three battered cents, and deposited them with reluctant hand on the counter. He gazed at them wistfully while the baker carelessly swept them with his hand into the till behind the counter; and then with a sigh of resignation, at parting with the coins, seized the loaf and shambled out into the street.

He put the bundle under his arm, and hastened up the street, his mouth watering in anticipation of the feast which awaited him. Do not laugh, reader,—little as you may regard a fresh loaf of bread, it was indeed a treat to Peter, who was accustomed, from motives of economy, to regale himself upon stale bread.

The baker was congratulating himself upon having done a charitable action, when Peter came back in haste, pale with affright.

"I—I—," he stammered, "must have dropped some money. You haven't picked up any, have you?"

"Not I!" said the baker, carelessly. "If you dropped it here you will find it somewhere on the floor. Stay, I will assist you."

Peter seemed rather disconcerted than otherwise by this offer of assistance, but could not reasonably interpose any objection.

After a very brief search Peter and the baker simultaneously discovered the missing coin. The former pounced upon it, but not before the latter had recognized it as a gold piece.

"Ho, ho!" thought he, in surprise, "my charity is not so well bestowed as I thought. Do you have many such coins?" he asked, meaningly.

"I?" said Peter, hastily, "Oh no! I am very poor. This is all I have, and I expect it will be gone soon,—it costs so much to live!"

"It'll never cost you much," thought the baker, watching the shabby figure of the miser as he receded from the shop.

II.

A MISER'S HOUSEHOLD

Peter Manson owned a small house in an obscure street. It was a weather-beaten tenement of wood, containing some six or eight rooms, all of which, with one exception, were given over to dirt, cobwebs, gloom, and desolation. Peter might readily have let the rooms which he did not require for his own use, but so profound was his distrust of human nature, that not even the prospect of receiving rent for the empty rooms could overcome his apprehension of being robbed by neighbors under the same roof. For Peter trusted not his money to banks or railroads, but wanted to have it directly under his own eye or within his reach. As for investing his gold in the luxuries of life, or even in what were generally considered its absolute necessaries, we have already seen that Peter was no such fool as that. A gold eagle was worth ten times more to him than its equivalent in food or clothing.

With more than his usual alacrity, old Peter Manson, bearing under his cloak the fresh loaf which he had just procured from the baker on such advantageous terms, hastened to his not very inviting home.

Drawing from his pocket a large and rusty door-key, he applied it to the door. It turned in the lock with a creaking sound, and the door yielding to Peter's push he entered.

The room which he appropriated to his own use was in the second story. It was a large room, of some eighteen feet square, and, as it is hardly necessary to say, was not set off by expensive furniture. The articles which came under this denomination were briefly these,—a cherry table which was minus one leg, whose place had been supplied by a broom handle fitted in its place; three hard wooden chairs of unknown antiquity; an old wash-stand; a rusty stove which Peter had picked up cheap at an auction, after finding that a stove burned out less fuel than a fireplace; a few articles of crockery of different patterns, some cracked and broken; a few tin dishes, such as Peter found essential in his cooking; and a low truckle bedstead with a scanty supply of bedclothes.

Into this desolate home Peter entered.

There was an ember or two left in the stove, which the old man contrived, by hard blowing, to kindle into life. On these he placed a few sticks, part of which he had picked up in the street early in the morning, and soon there was a little show of fire, over which the miser spread his hands greedily as if to monopolize what little heat might proceed therefrom. He looked wistfully at the pile of wood remaining, but prudence withheld him from putting on any more.

"Everything costs money," he muttered to himself. "Three times a day I have to eat, and that costs a sight. Why couldn't we get along with eating once a day? That would save two thirds. Then there's fire. That costs money, too. Why isn't it always summer? Then we shouldn't need any except to cook by. It seems a sin to throw away good, bright, precious gold on what is going to be burnt up and float away in smoke. One might almost as well throw it into the river at once. Ugh! only to think of what it would cost if I couldn't pick up some sticks in the street. There was a little girl picking up some this morning when I was out. If it hadn't been for her, I should have got more. What business had she to come there, I should like to know?"

"Ugh, ugh!"

The blaze was dying out, and Peter was obliged, against his will, to put on a fresh supply of fuel.

By this time the miser's appetite began to assert itself, and rising from his crouching position over the fire he walked to the table on which he had deposited his loaf of bread. With an old jack-knife he carefully cut the loaf into two equal parts. One of these he put back into the closet. From the same place he also brought out a sausage, and placing it over the fire contrived to cook it after a fashion. Taking it off he placed it on a plate, and seated himself on a chair by the table.

It was long since the old man, accustomed to stale bread,—because he found it cheaper,—had tasted anything so delicious. No alderman ever smacked his lips over the most exquisite turtle soup with greater relish than Peter Manson over his banquet.

"It is very good," he muttered, with a sigh of satisfaction. "I don't fare so well every day. If it hadn't been for that unlucky piece of gold, perhaps the baker would have let me had another loaf at the same price."

He soon despatched the half loaf which he allotted to his evening meal.

"I think I could eat the other half," he said, with unsatisfied hunger; "but I must save that for breakfast. It is hurtful to eat too much. Besides, here is my sausage."

The sausage was rather burned than cooked, but Peter was neither nice nor fastidious. He did not eat the whole of the sausage, however, but reserved one half of this, too, for breakfast, though it proved so acceptable to his palate that he came near yielding to the temptation of eating the whole. But prudence, or rather avarice, prevailed, and shaking his head with renewed determination, he carried it to the closet and placed it on the shelf.

Between seven and eight o'clock Peter prepared to go to bed, partly because this would enable him to dispense with a fire, the cost of which he considered so ruinous. He had but just commenced his preparations for bed when a loud knock was heard at the street door.

At the first sound of the knocking Peter Manson started in affright. Such a thing had not occurred in his experience for years.

"It's some drunken fellow," thought Peter. "He's mistaken the house. I'll blow out the candle, and then he'll think there's nobody here."

He listened again, in hopes to hear the receding steps of the visitor, but in vain. After a brief interval there came another knock, louder and more imperative than the first.

Peter began to feel a little uneasy.

"Why don't he go?" he muttered, peevishly. "He can't have anything to do with me. Nobody ever comes here. He's mistaken the house."

His reflections were here interrupted by a volley of knocks, each apparently louder than the last.

"Oh dear, what shall I do?" exclaimed the miser with a ludicrous mixture of terror and perplexity. "It's some desperate ruffian, I know it is. I wish the police would come. I shall be robbed and murdered."

Peter went to the window and put his head out, hoping to discover something of his troublesome visitor. The noise of opening the window attracted his attention.

"Hilloa!" he shouted. "I thought I'd make you hear some time or other. I began to think you were as deaf as a post, or else had kicked the bucket."

"Who's there?" asked Peter, in a quavering voice.

"Who's there! Come down and see, and don't leave a fellow to hammer away all night at your old rat-trap. Come down, and open the door."

"This ain't the house," said Peter. "You've made a mistake. Nobody ever comes here."

"No more I should think they would, if you always keep 'em waiting as long as you have me. Come along down, and let me in."

"But I tell you," persisted Peter, who didn't at all like the visitor's manners, "that you've made a mistake. This ain't the house."

"Ain't what house, I'd like to know?"

"It ain't the house you think it is," said the old man, a little puzzled by this question.

"And what house do I think it is? Tell me that, you old–"

Probably the sentence would have been finished in a manner uncomplimentary to Peter, but perhaps, from motives of policy, the stranger suppressed what he had intended to say.

"I don't know," returned Peter, at a loss for a reply, "but there's a mistake somewhere. Nobody comes to see me."

"I shouldn't think they would," muttered the outsider, "but every rule has its exceptions, and somebody's come to see you now."

"You've mistaken the person."

"No, I haven't. Little chance of making a mistake. You're old Peter Manson."

"He has come to see me," thought Peter, uneasily; "but it cannot be for any good end. I won't let him in; no, I won't let him in."

"Well what are you going to do about it?" asked his would-be visitor, impatiently.

"It's too late to see you to-night."

"Fiddlestick!" retorted the other. "It isn't eight yet."

"I'm just going to bed," added Peter, becoming momentarily more uneasy at the man's obstinacy.

"Going to bed at half past seven! Come, now, that's all a joke. You don't take me for a fool!"

"But I am," urged Peter, "I always do. I'm very poor, and can't afford to keep a fire and light going all the evening."

"You poor! Well, may be you are. But that ain't neither here nor there. I have got some important business to see you about, and you must let me in."

"Come to-morrow."

"It's no use; I must see you to-night. So just come down and let me in, or it'll be the worse for you."

"What a dreadful ruffian!" groaned Peter; "I wish the watch would come along, but it never does when it's wanted. Go away, good man," he said, in a wheedling tone. "Go away, and come again to-morrow."

"I tell you I won't go away. I must see you to-night."

Convinced that the man was not to be denied, Peter, groaning with fear, went down, and reluctantly drawing the bolt, admitted the visitor.

III.

THE UNWELCOME VISITOR

Opening the door with trembling hand Peter Manson saw before him a stout man of forty-five, with a complexion bronzed by exposure to the elements.

Short and thick-set, with a half-defiant expression, as if, to use a common phrase, he "feared neither man nor devil," a glance at him served hardly to reassure the apprehensive old man.

The stranger was attired in a suit of coarse clothing, and appeared to possess little education or refinement. He might be a sailor,—there was an indefinable something about him,—a certain air of the sea, that justified the suspicion that he had passed some part of his life, at least, in the realms of Father Neptune.

Peter Manson, holding in his hand the fragment of candle which flickered wildly from the sudden gust of wind which rushed in at the door just opened, stood in silent apprehension, gazing uneasily at his unwelcome visitor.

"Well, shipmate," said the latter, impatiently, "how long are you going to stand staring at me? It makes me feel bashful, not to speak of its not being over and above civil."

"What do you want?" inquired Peter, his alarm a little increased by this speech, making, at the same time, a motion as if to close the door.

"First and foremost, I should like to be invited in somewhere, where it isn't quite so public as at the street door. My business is of a private nature."

"I don't know you," said the miser, uneasily.

"Well, what's the odds if I know you?" was the careless reply. "Come, push ahead. Where do you live? Up stairs, or down stairs? I want to have a little private talk with you somewhere."

The speaker was about to cross the threshold when Peter stepped in front, as if to intercept him, and said, hurriedly, "Don't come in to-night; to-morrow will do just as well."

"By your leave," said the visitor, coolly, pushing his way in, in spite of the old man's feeble opposition. "I have already told you that I wanted to see you to-night. Didn't you hear me?"

"Thieves!" the old man half ejaculated, but was checked by the other somewhat sternly.

"No, old man, I am not a thief; but if you don't have done with your stupid charges, I may be tempted to verify your good opinion by trying my hand at a little robbery. Now lead the way to your den, wherever it is, if you know what is best for yourself."

The outer door was already closed, and Peter felt that he was at the intruder's mercy. Nevertheless, there was something in this last speech, rough and imperative as it was, that gave him a little feeling of security, so far as he had been led to suspect any designs on his property on the part of his companion.

Without venturing upon any further remonstrance, which, it was clear, would prove altogether useless, he shuffled up stairs, in obedience to the stranger's command, yet not without casting back over his shoulder a look of apprehension, as if he feared an attack from behind.

His visitor, perceiving this, smiled, as if amused at old Peter's evident alarm.

Arrived at the head of the stairs, Peter opened the door into the apartment appropriated to his own use.

The stranger followed him in, and after a leisurely glance about the room, seated himself with some caution in a chair, which did not look very secure.

Peter placed the flickering candle upon the mantel-piece, and seated himself.

It was long, very long, since a visitor had wakened the echoes of the old house; very long since any human being, save Peter himself, had been seated in that room. The old man could not help feeling it to be a strange thing, so unaccustomed was he to the sight of any other human face there.